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‘Graceful Rebellions’ one-woman show based on experience as queer Afghan Canadian

Shaista Latif stars as multiple characters in Graceful Rebellions, her one-woman play at SummerWorks. (amanda geensen)

By Aparita BhandariSpecial to the Star

Fri., Aug. 8, 2014

In a way, Shaista Latif has been acting for most of her life.

Growing up in Toronto Housing in Scarborough, Latif often returned from school to find soap operas playing on television. Her family emigrated from Afghanistan to Canada in 1987, and her mother would leave the television on all day. The melodramatic shows left an impression on Latif.

“I’d take the ladder from our bunk bed, the one I shared with my brother, and lay it on the side. I’d put a bedsheet behind it. So I had five frames, right? And then, I would take my toys and dolls, and make up these elaborate stories,” Latif says.

Today, Latif is sipping tea in a coffee shop at Yonge and College. Everything about her is expressive — her hazel-green eyes sparkle at every amusing anecdote she tells, her serene voice is patient when recounting episodes of awkwardness. It’s a quality that allows her to take on the multiple characters in her one-woman show Graceful Rebellions, now playing at Theatre Passe Muraille as part of the SummerWorks Performance Festival. Playing parts took on a different connotation at school. A quiet child, Latif was put in an ESL class at first, and found an unconventional way of dealing with being teased for being a brown kid.

“I would play dead,” says Latif, 27. “There was sand in the schoolyard, and I would lay down with my head in it, holding my breath. I wanted to see if anyone noticed if I disappeared.

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“I also took a sweater to school. I would put it on and pretend to be my twin, who didn’t have Afghan parents, and whose name was Stephanie or Jessica or Lisa.”

Latif also fantasized about being onstage, dreaming up scenarios that would have her performing at morning assembly, for example. In high school, she kept on auditioning for plays but got relegated to the stage crew instead.

“I remember I tried out for Lady Macbeth, and my teacher told me told me it was between me and this other girl, who was my arch nemesis. She said, it was so close but they’d already bought the costume. I was a big girl, even back then. I had a thick unibrow, which I wasn’t allowed to pluck,” Latif says.

Undeterred, she looked for other opportunities. At 14, she saw an ad in a local newspaper for a community theatre group. Latif started acting with them on the sly, telling her family she was going to study at her friend’s house, until she got caught in the act — quite literally.

“We used to perform in the Little Bandstand in (Little Avenue Memorial Park), and one day my grandmother happened to be walking by. I was playing a funny, sassy secretary,” says Latif.

Her grandmother didn’t understand English but sat down to watch, and then escorted her back home. Her family eventually supported her need to express herself, despite their reservations. “I didn’t look like an actor, I was not classically trained. I didn’t even go to theatre school.”

Instead, Latif started writing and directing her own plays, participating in the Sears Ontario Drama Festival aimed at high school students. That was followed by stints at a Soulpepper Theatre youth program, the Second City Conservatory program and a three-month contract working for Michael Rubenfeld, artistic producer of SummerWorks during another production. She also walked into the Bad Dog Theatre Company and Theatre Passe Muraille offices, offering to answer phones or bring coffee.

“I remember going to (artistic director) Andy McKim, and telling him I want to work at Theatre Passe Muraille,” she laughs. “He looked at me, and said — ‘Well, first of all, it’s pronounced Theatre Passe Muraille.’ I was so embarrassed!

“I had no idea how to get in that door. I was trying so hard to fit in. Everybody was really nice. Nobody said no. Andy allowed me to come in a number of times, usually on Fridays, to help sort out their old boxes and files in the office.”

At the same time, Latif was struggling with another aspect of her identity — as a queer Afghan Canadian.

“I was doing a lot of hetero-oriented plays. Being queer is not really welcome in the improv world. You’re playing a terrorist or some sort of bomb person,” says Latif.

So she took off to New York for three months, to train with prolific storyteller Adam Wade. When she came back, she applied to Buddies In Bad Times Theatre’s Young Creator Unit, a program for queer-identified emerging artists, to develop an artistic voice by creating and performing a 25-minute show. She got in, and that’s where Graceful Rebellions was born.

“I think it’s important to write your own story, and I wanted to use my life as resource and material,” says Latif. Although she’s been out in public, and is very engaged in the LGBTQ community, Graceful Rebellions is about her own experience of learning how to identify herself as a queer Afghan Canadian woman.

“It’s a very delicate subject … Creating this show has been a release, and an understanding of where I belong in this world.”

For more information on Graceful Rebellions and other performances, go to summerworks.ca

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